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考研英语阅读理解有一部分是截取自报刊文章,因此考生在复习备考的过程中要注意提高报刊文章的阅读能力,把握时事阅读。下面新东方在线小编分享历年真题同源的30篇报刊文章,附有注释和解析,希望考生认真阅读,提高对此类文章的阅读能力和增加相关词汇量。
考研英语阅读真题同源报刊文章30篇(5)
The world since September 11th
IT STANDS to reason that 19 men cannot change history. But they did. Five
years and two Americanled wars later, the world created by the September 11th
hijackers is a darker place than almost anyone predicted at the start of the new
century. AlQaeda itself may have been battered and dispersed, but the idea it
stands for has spread its poison far and wide.
The essence of that idea, so far as a coherent one can be distilled from
the ferment of broadcasts and fat was issued by Osama bin Laden and his
disciples, is that Islam is everywhere under attack by the infidel and that
every Muslim has a duty to wage holy war, jihad, in its defence. America is
deemed a special target for having trespassed on the Arab heartland. Intoxicated
by their defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the jihadists
are hungry to topple another superpower.
This cause had deadly adherents before the attacks on the Pentagon and the
World Trade Centre in 2001. Mr bin Laden issued his "Declaration of the World
Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders" in 1998, the year
alQaeda bombed two American embassies in East Africa. But an honest tally of
the record since September 11th has to conclude that the number of jihadists and
their sympathisers has probably multiplied many times since then. It has
multiplied, moreover, partly as a result of the way America responded.
The first of the two wars George Bush launched after September 11th looked
initially like a success, and compared with the second it still is. AlQaeda
operated openly in Afghanistan and enjoyed the protection of its noxious Taliban
regime, which refused America's request to hand Mr bin Laden over. America's
invasion, one month after America itself had been attacked, therefore enjoyed
broad international support.
The fighting ended swiftly and the political aftermath went as well as
could be expected in a polity as tangled as Afghanistan's. By 2004 a firstever
free election had legitimated the presidency of Hamid Karzai. A ramshackle but
representative parliament took office in 2005. The country is plagued by
warlordism and the opium trade, and Taliban fighters are mounting a challenge in
the south. But they do not yet look capable of dislodging the new government in
Kabul.
Even though Mr bin Laden himself eluded America's forces in Afghanistan,
the invasion deprived alQaeda of a haven for planning and training. This
achievement, however, was cancelled out by the consequences of Mr Bush's second
war: the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. There, three and a half years on,
fighting and terrorism kill hundreds every month, providing the jihadists with
both a banner around which to recruit and a live arena in which to sharpen their
military skills.
Why has Iraq turned out so much worse than Afghanistan? Not only because of
the familiar catalogue of Rumsfeldian incompetence-disbanding Iraq's army,
committing too few American troops-but also because of alQaeda itself. Like
most Sunni extremists, some in alQaeda regard Shia Muslims as virtual
apostates. Abu Musab alZarqawi, the movement's leader in Iraq, managed before
being killed last June to organise so many attacks on Shias and their holy
places that after a long forbearance the Shias at last struck back, turning what
had been an insurgency against the Americans and the new government into a
bitter sectarian war.
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